1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a system and method for solving ambiguous meanings of unknown words used in electronic communication. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for determining a common social networking group of a sending client and a recipient client and using the common social networking group to identify a definition of an unknown word.
2. Description of the Related Art
Instant messaging (IM) is becoming popular as a tool for performing global business as well as for social networking. Instant messaging is an efficient tool for users across continents with different culture/languages to communicate with each other and quickly receive responses. However, a challenge found is that a user may not be able to respond quickly when a message includes “unknown words” whose meanings are dependent upon the context in which they are used. As a result, the user either sends a message back to a sending client asking for clarification, or spends time attempting to understand the meaning of the unknown word. Several reasons for unknown words are:                Abbreviations—To save time, people use acronyms and abbreviations extensively as a short cut to type an entire message.        Different knowledge domains—The same word may have a different meaning in different context. Some domains may include words or terminologies that people from other domains may have never seen.        Different Cultures/Languages—When people from different native languages send electronic messages, many words used in the electronic message may be misunderstood.        
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method for reducing an unknown word's definition ambiguity by identifying the context in which the unknown word is utilized in a message.